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Do you think the SE's, will start looking at these kinds of domains as spam?
And those are the areas in which we have seen dramatic weeding of the SERPs by Google.
Yeh, some get away with it still, but on the whole, spammy techniques are become more subtle.
At this rate, we will see people spamming in the future by creating dozens of unique and original sites with good quality of content, good naviagtion and useful information. ;)
JOAT
;)
If you've got a keyword1-keyword2 URL, you'll get lots of valuable anchor text links with almost no effort at all ;-)
Shhhh. Keep that to yourself.
Google really does give a boost for having the link in the anchor text. Another reason why thinking in terms of branding for websites is a bad idea.
Depends what the brand is (mine contains my major keyword, for example) and whether you're planning for the short term or for the long term. Also, if you're hoping for links from other Webmasters (rather than from your own doorway pages or crosslinked sites), you might want to consider how much skepticism participants in this thread have expressed about domain names like fuzzy-blue-widgets.com.
Also, this site was not intended as one where a visitor would keyboard the URL; remembering this domain and correctly keyboarding it would be a lot of trouble. Its sole mission is to be clicked on, nothing more. If I wanted people to be able to reach it by keyboarding the domain, I would choose a short, memorable domain name and redirect to the difficult domain.
For SE's it will absolutely be unfair to penalize hyphens in domain names (except the widget-widget-widget-widget.com type), the way to go is to pay less, or better, no attention to domain name.
Why should widgets.com have an advantage over mycompanyname.com if mycompanyname.com has same or better standards of content?
Still, if it works, and most posts indicate that it does, it will become the wild west of domain spamming and some kind of action has to be taken by the SE's...
I'm talking about hyphens in the main url, not in the individual site pages which I recognize are almost inevitable if you're an organized site builder.
If you've got a hyhenated keyword-in-domain site don't bother sending me a link exchange request unless I personnly know you and it's well established and squeaky clean. Your site may be fine but I'm not going to risk putting a link on my site that may turn sour when I'm not looking. My own experience tells me that many of hyphenated keyword-in-domain sites are of the troublesome type, so why should I risk it?
If you want to send all those link requests from folks you don't know my way mayor, I'll be happy to review them for quality and relevance personally. ;)
Unless it's an absurd example of keyword stuffing, I would never discriminate based on hyphens alone.
I totally disagree. Quite the opposite is the case.
Tell them the name and just add that the words are separated by hyphens. A hell of a lot better than telling them wwWebmasterWorldebsitewhichiwrotemyself.com is to tell them www.my-web-site-which-i-wrote-myself.com. Easier all round in my opinion. They'll find it far easier to get right when they type it in.
I know stacks of people who know nothing about SEO, or even what it is, who have built great multi-hyphen sites specifically using clever or funny phrases. There's no problem with it... except in heads of those who want to climb ahead of competitors who use them.
To be frank I find this whole debate depressing. Anything that focuses on "how to damage the other guy's ranking" is counter productive all round. I think a lot of people would do a whole lot better if they spent this time seeking ways to improve their own positions and content, rather than lobbying for some sort of attack on others. Very sad.
Anything that focuses on "how to damage the other guy's ranking" is counter productive all round. I think a lot of people would do a whole lot better if they spent this time seeking ways to improve their own positions and content, rather than lobbying for some sort of attack on others. Very sad.
Originally this debate was an inquery on how the SE's would react to multi hyphened url's - not an attempt to miscredit anyone, on the contrary - if it works, and works long time, why not go for it?
I just don't want to spend hundreds of hours on design and content building just to see SE's flush it down the drain after a few month.
Still, for reasons of quality on serps, I think these multi hyphened domains will have a hard time in SE's as soon as they become numerous enough - www.1-widget-widget-widget-widget.com types.
The best and most fair way to deal with these domains (or any domains) for SE's would be to remove any credits for domain names.
As to weather people like them or not, it seems that most people dislike them and recognices them as not being serious, and I still agree with that point of view.
If you guys check the title of the post and the original posts, youll see that this is not an attack on others and is an attempt to come up with some sort of idea of where the line is crossed between a legitimate brand name url and a KW stuffed spammy URL.
There may have been some posts that have focussed on how to damage the other guy and those are no more helpful than "very sad", or "you da man".
The majority of the thread (at least the first half of it anyway - havent read much of the latter half) was a genuine attempt to grasp a common understanding on this issue.
On the whole, I think the general concensus has been that keyword rich domain names have definite branding value and the use of hyphens can add to this as well.
But the repetition of keywords in a domain (www.blue-widgets-blue-widgets.com) is verging on being spam (and from a marketing point of view, is highly uncreative, unoriginal and is obviously a desperate attempt at getting some web presence).
IMHO we could see the SEs clamping down on these domains, not because they are spam as such, but they reflect the practices of the webmasters who use them. Why have www.blue-widgets-blue-widgets.com, when you can have www.(brand name).com? They are obviously concentrating on the SEs, so their sites may warrant a second look. Just IMHO though! :)
JOAT
I'll answer my own question - of course they could. Would this be unfair to the site with five hundred pages of original content written just for that site? Of course it would, but in the world of algorithm design nothing is ever perfect. The SEs want to deliver quality results at the top of their listings - not EVERY site, just quality sites that will satisfy the searcher. If a site with some of the best content ends up on the third page of results, it's unfortunate and a loss to the searcher - but if three affiliate spam sites got knocked off the first page, it's a tradeoff most SEs would make, IMO.
That's why I think heavily hyphenated domains could be risky. I'm sure there are great, original hyphenated sites, but I don't think they comprise the majority, or even a large minority. As I noted above, EVERY link request I've received in the last few months from a domain with three or more hyphens has taken me to a junk site of one kind or another. That's a limited sample, but I've become conditioned to expect junk when I see hyphens - and SEs can play the odds, too.
Anything that focuses on "how to damage the other guy's ranking" is counter productive all round. I think a lot of people would do a whole lot better if they spent this time seeking ways to improve their own positions and content, rather than lobbying for some sort of attack on others. Very sad.
Well, gosh, I guess I'd better become an old sober sides pretty quickly here. It was that sentiment, expressed by Napoleon, that I roundly cheer.
I agree completely that lengthy, hyphenated, stuffed domain names are spammy, extremely spammy. However, as a practical matter, they're not spam until Google declares them to be spam, which clearly could happen.
Thus, one is well advised, in the near term, to heed Napoleon's wise admonition.
Thus, one is well advised, in the near term, to heed Napoleon's wise admonition.
Napoleon's admonition was based on a misreading of this thread. The theme of this discussion was set by ulstrup, whose original post read:
For searches related to high competition keywords (medical, real estate, gambling, travel, etc.) I've found a rise in numbers of keyword stuffed domains over the last 3 month, domains like www.keyword1-keyword2-keyword3.com. These sites are usually affiliate or promotional sites, which is OK as long as they deliver, but how long will Google and other engines allow domains like that?
Do you think the SE's, will start looking at these kinds of domains as spam?
Note the last sentence of ulstrup's post. That's the real issue here. The question isn't whether keyword-stuffed domain names are good or evil, or whether Webmasters should link to them, or whether site owners should report other site owners with multi-hyphen domain names. It's whether SEs are likely to penalize or at least neutralize the value of multi-hyphen domain names, and (by implication) whether it's wise to put one's eggs in the multi-hyphen domain-name basket.
He's entitled to that opinion, and ought to be able to say so here and support it. I happen to agree, and want to lend my support to that opinion.
I mean no disrespect. Simply that we may well disagree which is OK. There's plenty of room for disagreement on this board.
He's entitled to that opinion, and ought to be able to say so here and support it. I happen to agree, and want to lend my support to that opinion.
Sure, he's entitled to his opinion, and he's entitled to express it. I never said he wasn't--I merely asserted (and I still do) that he misread the topic of this thread.
I think its entirely appropriate in a thread about spam, or incipient spam, to state flatly the opinion that witch hunts for spam are wasteful of one's time and energy.
I wasn't aware that anyone here was suggesting "witch hunts" for spam. We've been discussing whether search engines might choose to penalize or neutralize the value of "keyword stuffing" in hyphenated domain names--and what risks Webmasters might face if they use that technique.
I have no doubt that the SE's will do something about it, but to punish all sites using hyphens is also counterproductive and without merit.
Its really very easy ... widgets-widget-blue-fuzzy-widgets.com is spam. Go ahead and penalize them. Toys-are-me.com ... leave them alone.
There are legitimate reasons to use hyphens and since they are now available ... why not make use of thim if you wish to.
I have no doubt that the SE's will do something about it, but to punish all sites using hyphens is also counterproductive and without merit.
Google may just decide to ignore keywords in domain names, just as it ignores meta="keyword" tags. IMHO, that's a more likely scenario than penalizing sites for using hyphens.
Of course, it could also penalize sites that use blatant and incontrovertible keyword spamming such as "widgets-widgets-widgets.com."
Europe, the problem is Google can't ignore keywords in domains. It's a central part of their algo. Links to sites carry those keywords.
It's the Google algo that produces those domains.
Penalizing those domains would be a classic example of an engine penalizing sites for a weakness in their algo.
american-widgets
free-widgets
free-american-widgets -> hmm ... i'd say fishy!?
or
timbuktu-hotels
cheap-hotels
cheap-timbuktu-hotels -> also fishy, no!?
Do you have examples why to use more than one hyphen?
